Canberra’s winter celebration of jazz returns to The Street in June 2016 with a mini program and massive bill of renowned Australian and overseas jazz musicians including the legendary Mulatu Astatke, Father of Ethio-Jazz.

This festival off-year sampler offers audiences the rich experiences they can expect from The Street as a nationally respected artistic hub. “We have created an exciting program with partners and artists” says CEO and Artistic Director Caroline Stacey. “Curating a journey of musical responses drawing upon place, global cultures, contemporary compositions, iconic popular culture and current and historical events, this year’s stellar line-up showcases seriously inventive and innovative projects and great artists exploring jazz now.”

A master of the vibraphone, Mulatu Astatke is one of Africa’s most influential and enduring musical greats, making a lasting contribution to global music in combining jazz and funk grooves with Ethiopia’s distinctive pentatonic scales. His musical genius is the sensuality and sophistication with which Astatke contrasts these minimalist scales with richly chromatic harmony. Astatke came to prominence in the West through ‘The Ethiopiques’ recordings of the swinging Addis Ababa of the early 1970’s, followed by special guest appearances with jazz royalty, the great Duke Ellington, Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray movie soundtracks and Kanye West samples in the 2000’s.  He continues to live in Addis Ababa whenever not touring. Meeting Australia’s Black Jesus Experience in 2009, a musical relationship and friendship began that has led Astatke to describe the eight piece global-funk-machine as, “My favourite backing band”.


 

Spoken word, music and projections informed by a coded secret diary bring Ambon, a little-known POW story to life in a diverse and moving suite of music conceived and composed by Lloyd Swanton for a twelve-piece ensemble. Bassist Swanton, best known for his work with long-running ensembles, The Necks and The catholics,  was moved by his Uncle Stuart’s diary accounts of the doomed Gull Force sent to the island of Ambon (in present-day Indonesia) in late 1941 to defend it against Japan and their captivity for the next three and a half years. Like the majority of his POW mates, Stuart Swanton did not survive but his diary did. Containing many musical references including the significance of music in their captive lives, Swanton pays tribute to his uncle, drawing beauty from a horrific story and sharing insights into a story he believed needed to be told. He also will be playing his uncle’s bass.

The migration is the third in a series of critically acclaimed suites by rising jazz star Stu Hunter, a Sydney-based composer and pianist who grew up in Canberra. Preceded by the muse and the gathering, the migration’s driving grooves and lush sonic landscapes form powerful scaffolds on which to drape rich harmonic complexity and deep emotive melodies. the migration is a soul-searching and cascading response to modern life, love, family, cultural complexity and the blurring of cultural identity within the global diaspora – performed by a world class ensemble featuring ten of Australia’s leading musicians.

VENUE             The Street Theatre, 15 Childers St, Canberra City West
SEASON           Thursday 8 June – Monday 13 June 2016
TICKETS           $25 – $55
BOOKINGS 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au

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